• In response to Earth Day, I’m going to try to get bike lockers installed near my office: http://is.gd/tRX2 #
• Another NHL team in TO? About freaking time: http://bit.ly/RN4ze #
• Post: Expect: php curl should play nice – http://bit.ly/wuksF #
• Post: Attending #phptek – Which Talks… – http://bit.ly/bttCF #
• Might try to get the #bike out this afternoon… If it doesn’t #rain. #
• Is it #bad #twitter #etiquette to #hashtag #everything? #

(See what I did there? When this tweets, the hashtag will be picked up!)

So in less than a month I’ll be attending php|tek¹ adn its high time I decided what talks I want to be seen at. Erm, I mean, which I want to attend…

Tutorial Day:

I’m torn bewteen MVC Development in PHP and Web Application Security Boot Camp but in the end I think MVC will win out…

PHP Code Review wins in the afternoon. And that evening I’ll be busy attending the ChiSox/Twins game.

Day 1:

Highly Scalable Web Applications

Streaming XML

MySQL Server Performance Tuning

SPL to the Rescue

Getting it Done

Security Centered Design

Day 2:

Exceptional PHP

Desktop RIAs with PHP, HTML and JS in AIR

Seven Steps to Better OOP Code

PHP Database Application Architecture for Scalability and Availability

Bend SQL to Your Will With EXPLAIN

Taking it All Offline with SQL Anywhere

Day 3:

Out with Regex, In with Tokens

Working with Microformats

It looks like I’m going to have a lot of fun and will learn a lot. I’m hoping some of my methods get justified as well by my peers.

Kudos again to my work for sending me on this trip, and to my wife for allowing it!

Once again, my job has me writing mutli-threaded PHP¹ scripts that use PHP’s CURL² library to connect to remote servers. (I’m calling an API here!)  Without going into too much detail, the networking specifics changed between me and the api server, adding a new, or newly reconfigured, invisible proxy to the data path.

This proxy is running Lighttpd, while light in name, is starting to throw around it’s weight and get in my way.

Warning! We are going to get technical!

Continue Reading »

I’ll be attending php|tek 2009¹ in Chicago this May. If anyone is attending who knows me, we should make plans to meet up.

I’m excited for this conference. I can’t remember the last time I attended a programming conference, let alone one being paid for by my employer!

Just upgraded to version 2.7.1 and enabled Google Gears support. Can’t see much improvement on speed. I wonder what can be done on the front-end with Gears…

There are plenty of rumors running around right now about a so called ‘iTablet‘¹ and most are probably on the money. Apple, still being run in absentia by Steve Jobs, is going to churn out a new money maker this fall, just in time for the Christmas season.

What if the new device wasn’t just a large iPod Touch/Mac Book hybrid? But rather a new form factor that would push the limit on what we could do in our living rooms.

Imagine a portable Mac that is designed to sit in our house, near the couch. Think of it as an internet tablet that along with some special software would allow for remote controlling of a remote iTunes or AppleTV. (We’ve already seen the AppleTV iPhone app so this isn’t very hard to imagine.)

The tablet would also act as a remote TV, allowing the AppleTV to stream content to it, as well as acting as the controller. In this way, an AppleTV could stream to two TVs, the main TV, and a remote TV, be it a Mac or an iTablet.

Apple would be wise to port iPhone/Touch applications natively to this mini-computer and create similar simple interfaces for controlling remote devices or content. This would change the way the AppleTV and FrontRow’s interfaces work. Either would be able to be controlled by this new device, and instead of the simple menus we know now, we would see instead and iPhone like interface that is much easier to handle.

If Apple were smart, and we all know they are, this device could eventually be used as a giant multi-touch input device for any Mac you care to hook it up to. I don’t think it would bite much in Wacom’s market space but it would be cool to have a nice large multi-touch display that could be used with any Mac.

Now is the time for Apple to do something different than everyone else. Everyone is crying for a tablet or a MID or a Netbook. However I think they can redefine the playing field a little by introducing a simple computer, that one it’s own doesn’t have a whole lot of computing power, but it would embrace and extend the Apply line, thus bringing some needed value to the brand.

With that said, the AppleTV would certainly need a refresh. In fact, it’s been long overdue for one. Wouldn’t it make perfect sense that Apple has been holding back on the new versions until the new tablet is ready? Could we see Jobs return during the summer/fall to an event that introduces a new product along with a refresh of an old friend?

With the sales at the AppStore nearing 1 billion, does it not make sense to get those apps on yet another device, a new market previously unexploited?